“Does a man,” he asked, “dine off one dish at a gourmet’s banquet?  And why should I restrict myself to one course at the most richly-spread table in Europe?  One must love at least two women to appreciate either; and, did the silly creatures but know it, a rival becomes them like a patch.”

Sister Mary of the Crucifix, he went on to explain, possessed the very qualities that Miranda lacked.  The daughter of a rich nobleman of Treviso, she was skilled in music, drawing and all the operations of the needle, and was early promised in marriage to a young man whose estates adjoined her father’s.  The jealousy of a younger sister, who was secretly in love with the suitor, caused her to accuse Coeur-Volant’s mistress of misconduct and thus broke off the marriage; and the unhappy girl, repudiated by her bridegroom, was at once despatched to a convent in Venice.  Enraged at her fate, she had repeatedly appealed to the authorities to release her; but her father’s wealth and influence prevailed against all her efforts.  The abbess, however, felt such pity for her that she was allowed more freedom than the other nuns, with whom her wit and beauty made her a favourite in spite of her exceptional privileges.  These, as Coeur-Volant hinted, included the liberty of leaving the convent after night-fall to visit her friends; and he professed to be one of those whom she had thus honoured.  Always eager to have his good taste ratified by the envy of his friends, he was urgent with Odo to make the lady’s acquaintance, and it was agreed that, on the first favourable occasion, a meeting should take place at Coeur-Volant’s casino.  The weeks elapsed, however, without Odo’s hearing further of the matter, and it had nearly passed from his mind when one August day he received word that the Marquess hoped for his company that evening.

He was in that mood of careless acquiescence when any novelty invites, and the heavy warmth of the summer night seemed the accomplice of his humour.  Cloaked and masked, he stepped into his gondola and was swept rapidly along the Grand Canal and through winding channels to the Giudecca.  It was close on midnight and all Venice was abroad.  Gondolas laden with musicians and hung with coloured lamps lay beneath the palace windows or drifted out on the oily reaches of the lagoon.  There was no moon, and the side-canals were dark and noiseless but for the hundreds of caged nightingales that made every byway musical.  As his prow slipped past garden walls and under the blackness of low-ached bridges Odo felt the fathomless mystery of the Venetian night:  not the open night of the lagoons, but the secret dusk of nameless waterways between blind windows and complaisant gates.

At one of these his gondola presently touched.  The gate was cautiously unbarred and Odo found himself in a strip of garden preceding a low pavilion in which not a light was visible.  A woman-servant led him indoors and the Marquess greeted him on the threshold.